Congratulations to Rob Gens, who received the 2012 NIPS (Neural Information Processing Systems) Best Student Paper Award for his paper “Discriminative Learning of Sum-Product Networks.”
NIPS is one of the top two machine learning conferences, and this is the only award it gives. (UW CSE is two for two with papers on sum-product networks to date – Hoifung Poon won the UAI-11 Best Paper Award for the previous one.) Read more →
Congratulations and thanks to:
Read the GeekWire article here. Read more →
Xconomy reports on a session at last Thursday’s Washington Innovation Summit chaired by UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska. Other participants quoted in the article include Christian Chabot (Tableau Software), Cameron Myhrvold (Ignition Partners), Ruben Ortega (Google), and Mike Fridgen (Decide.com).
Read it here. Read more →
Control-Alt-Hack is a computer security-themed card game designed to be entertaining, give a glimpse into white hat hacking, and highlight some of the more surprising aspects of computer security. It targets kids age 14 and up. It’s fun, and also educational / awareness-building. The game designers – Tamara Denning, Tadayoshi Kohno, and Adam Shostack from UW CSE – are computer security experts, and took care to include as much juicy and accurate(ish) content as possible. Game mechanics were provided by gaming powerhouse Steve Jackson Games (Munchkin and GURPS).
Control-Alt-Hack is newly available on Amazon.com. The University of Washington will also be shipping some free copies out to educators (in industry and academia). If you’re an educator and are interested in a copy, please see the “request an educational copy” page here.
A big thank you to Intel Labs, NSF, and ACM SIGCSE for supporting the development and distribution of this game, and to Steve Jackson Games for licensing the Ninja Burger mechanics!
UW C4C press release here. Read more →
The morning session at Thursday’s Washington Innovation Summit focused on “big data.” It began with a keynote by Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith – a rousing call for greater focus on computer science education. UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska then introduced the “big data” topic. Lazowska then emceed a panel with Christian Chabot (CEO, Tableau Software), Mike Fridgen (CEO, UW CSE startup Decide.com), Cameron Myhrvold (Founding Partner, Ignition Partners), and UW CSE alum Ruben Ortega (Engineering Director, Google). This was followed by short presentations by UW CSE professor Shwetak Patel (on the smart home), PNNL’s Carl Imhoff (on the smart grid), and Sage Bionetworks’ Mike Kellen (on smart discovery), and a Q&A session moderated by Lazowska. Isilon’s Bill Richter then introduced the Information Technology Coalition.
Washington Governor-elect Jay Inslee and President of the Washington DC – based Information Technology & Innovation Foundation Rob Atkinson provided luncheon keynotes. A panel discussion on regional competitiveness was followed by a panel discussion on education and workforce issues featuring UW CSE Chair Hank Levy and UW CSE alum (and UW Regent) Jeremy Jaech.
Seattle Times coverage here, here, and here. GeekWire coverage here. Lazowska’s talk here. Read more →
Well, to the Kansas City Star, at least …
“Online price changes are driven by software that enables retailers to react to competitors in real time and make personalized pitches to consumers based on their browsing and purchase histories. Complex algorithms calculate factors such as inventory levels, how many sellers are carrying a product, how long it’s been on the market and when a new model is expected …
“The good news is that consumers have a growing number of weapons in their digital arsenal …
“Decide, the cutting-edge site founded last year by [UW CSE professor Oren] Etzioni, helps cost-conscious consumers make sense of price changes using the same data-driven analytics that retailers use to predict consumer behavior. The site analyzes millions of reviews, blogs, articles, news releases and pricing trends, then recommends whether to buy or wait …
“‘Often consumers are the target of big data and of data mining, and what we’re doing is we’re leveling the playing field,’ Etzioni said. ‘We’re trying to make data be your friend rather than a weapon that’s used against you.'”
Read more here. Try Decide.com here. Read more →
Tom Daniel – UW professor of Biology and of Computer Science & Engineering, and Director of UW’s NSF Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering (CSNE), has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Tom joins CSE’s Susan Eggers and Ed Lazowska as AAAS Fellows.
Congratulations Tom! Read more →
David Wetherall
Wen-Hann Wang
UW CSE Ph.D. alum Wen-Hann Wang and UW CSE professor David Wetherall have been named to the 2013 class of Fellows of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Wen-Hann, Vice President of Intel’s Software and Solutions Group, was recognized “for contributions to multi-level cache hierarchy and multiprocessor systems.”
David, an expert in computer networking, was recognized “for contributions to the design of flexible, robust, and secure networks.”
Congratulations to Wen-Hann and David! (David is the thirteenth UW CSE faculty member to be elected a Fellow of the IEEE.) Read more →
David Pogue’s PBS NOVA Science NOW featured the work of UW CSE Ph.D. alum Adrien Treuille – now a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University – as the final segment of the episode “What Will the Future Be Like?”
Watch this terrific 12-minute PBS NOVA Science NOW segment!
There’s lot of other great Computer Science content in the full 52-minute show – watch the entire show here.
(Last month, UW CSE professor Yoshi Kohn and his students were featured by Pogue – information here. Work on Foldit – the topic of Pogue’s interview with Adrien Treuille, continues in UW CSE’s Center for Game Science; the Director of the Center for Game Science, Seth Cooper, won the 2011 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for work related to Foldit.) Read more →
“Every Black Friday, retailers lure shoppers in the cold, predawn hours to wait in long lines with the promise of one-day-only deals that can’t be beat. And every year, shoppers ask themselves, Is this really worth it?’
“The answer, it turns out, often is, ‘No.’
“An analysis by pricing research firm Decide Inc. and The Wall Street Journal of this year’s most-touted Black Friday deals found that many of the bargains advertised as ‘doorbusters’ were available at lower prices at other times of the year—sometimes even at the same retailer.”
Read more here. Read more →